September 5, 2011

“And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war... President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote... Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

I realize "let's take these sons of bitches out" can be interpreted to mean let's vote these terrible people out of office. But "take them out" is not an idiomatic expression that corresponds to "vote them out." Take them out? Maybe that's not the phrase he intended to use, but if it was unintended, it was still a gaffe. A revealing gaffe. Unless you're speaking in a positive way — referring to taking someone out on a date, for example — "take them out" is a violent command. With "sons of bitches" right there, it's unmistakably violent. Now, you can say it's only metaphorical, and all Hoffa really wants is to oust these people from office.

But it was only last January that Obama and many other Democrats were saying that violent metaphors, including a simple target on a map, were dangerous incitements for the unstable irrational folk out there.

117 comments:

That he said he was proud after saying what he did in January should surprise no one. To use a somewhat cliched quip about POTUS, everything he said comes with an expiration date.

Can't wait until Carney tries to spin this one tomorrow. Who wants to bet it will be a football metaphor? As in, your job during this play is to get in that linebacker's face and take him out. Sure, in football, it's understood that means take the linebacker out of the play for 4.5 seconds or so.

"Take them out" only connotes murder in limited circumstances. Everywhere else it idiomatically means "defeat". Your averge fifth grader understands this. Is it worth the risk of appearing foolish to play the game of holding your political opponents to their own rules?

What is the percentage of union members in the private sector? 6.9%. I don't see anyone other than union leaders (and foolish grad students in Wisconsin) who want a war, but if they start one, they're going to lose very, very badly.

This is just the beginning. What you heard or read today is the appetizer. The fun begins tomorrow. The entire POTUS Obama team (consultants, operatives, bundlers, reporters) are motivated to defeat the GOP. There is no place to hide. The Thursday speech will be a grand slam: World Series, Game 7, bottom of ninth inning....

This is different. Hoffa was speaking to an assembly of sensitive, nonviolent types who who never consider harming another human being, unlike those crazy teabaggers. If you can't trust the Teamsters to behave themselvesves, who can you trust?

The interpretation that the sob's were only elected officials is a charitable interpretation of Hoffa's words. In context, they seemed to refer to the tea party as a whole.

Also today, Biden called his political opponents the "barbarians" at the gate, and that he and the unions need to "fight, fight, fight."

Liberal politicians are sloppy with this kind of stuff because they have always gotten away with saying pretty much anything. That may be changing.

This actually is a great opportunity for Obama, but he probably will not have the guts or wisdom to take advantage of it. He should make a big deal out of taking issue with comments first thing tomorrow.

The Democrats have been viciously and unfairly attacking the Tea Party for over two years. It was a calculated campaign to discredit them, because liberals saw they were a threat and knew the MSM would try ot help them. It was a shameful effort to defame millions of Americans. Fortunately, it failed.

I don't think it does. I think that it can, but generally "take 'em out" is way way more explicitly violent than, oh, "target" is.

Though even the term "campaign" is a specific military term and we use "fight" sorts of rhetoric all the time in politics. "Take them out" is only really interesting because of the (drumroll please) hypocrisy of it all.

I always get a laugh out of the union slugs who start off saying, "I'm a working man", as if you don't work unless you're in a union - a condition many of them would like to see. If this is an America where they don't belong, it's because they sold their souls to the Democrats.

This is a direct threat to anyone who opposes the Democrat agenda, including their handmaidens in the unions. Think Kenneth Gladney.

Oh please, Hoffa knew what he was saying, just as Andre Carson intended to accuse Tea Party people of wanting to lynch all black people and Maxine Waters wanting TP to go to hell.

These are desperate leftists who will say and do anything to push America past the tipping point of Obama's promised "transformation." If it means thuggery, demonization and threats of race riots to get people to re-elect Obama, so be it. What Hoffa and Biden said to today is ugly, but you ain't seen nothing yet.

I listened to the SOB statement in full context, and I was wrong above in saying Hoffa was referring to the entire Tea Party. I think it is pretty clear he is referring to taking out opponents in elections.

What's hilarious is that this is the best Media Matters can do to spin the line. Weak. Of course context is important and can fundamentally change the meaning of a remark, but for the reasons Althouse's post notes, this doesn't.

So again, let's be clear: We oughta take Jimmy Hoffa out. I'm sure he's perfectly comfortable at the idea of a whole legion of people out to take him out. Nope, no connotation of violence there.

Synova said..."Yes, of course, because people in the Tea Party don't work."

It's funny, all the people I met in the professional left in Britain, all the people who were for the workers, not one of them had done an honest day's work in their lives. They weren't aware of the irony, and I'm sure big labor isn't either. There are a lot of union workers who work very hard, and who are very skilled. And then there's parasites like Hoffa.

I mean, we have to understand that labor is a commodity, and the purpose of unions is to create an artificial scarcity in the market for that commodity in order to benefit a monopoly provider. In the argot, they're cartelizations of the labor market. And we have laws against that, as it happens; perhaps President Perry should file suit against every labor union in the country as a violation of section one?

"Jimmy Hoffa is a has-been relic stuck in a former era. His idea of freedom and liberty involves forcibly extorting union dues from their membership, and applying them to whichever crooked politician has his hand out," Russell told TPM. "These big union thugs are on the wrong side of history, which is why they lose every time they try to attack We the People."

It was only last January that Obama and many other Democrats were saying that violent metaphors, including a simple target on a map, were dangerous incitements for the unstable irrational folk out there.

I know it's a tactic to use against them but, otherwise, I don't know why anybody pays attention to what they say - they never mean it. The call for civility was really a call for conservatives to shut up, so why keep going back to it? They knew metaphors aren't incitement - they were just playing an angle - so why keep acting like there's any validity to it? I get sick of this show where some unreal bullshit is treated as though it's got substance and we all have to start tippy-toeing around because they laid down some bogus rule they don't follow themselves.

The one thing Hoffa and his colleagues in the labor movement could do to instantly increase the wages and employment of American workers would be to press for the enforcement of our many, many laws against working w/o a valid SS and to lobby for a reduction in H1B1 visas.Fat chance of that happening.

garage mahal said..."And seriously Simon? WTH. No problem with Fox deliberately doctoring the video? It wasn't a matter of providing context. They dishonestly hacked it up."

They do that, but this wasn't such an occasion. The line that was omitted did not change the meaning of Hoffa's words, and news routinely omits language from quotes when it's irrelevant to the point. Here, the omitted line changes nothing for the reason that Althouse mentioned: With or without the preface line, "'take them out' is not an idiomatic expression that corresponds to 'vote them out.'" It has an entirely different meaning. If Hoffa is comfortable with people demanding that he be taken out, he'll be in a good position to cry foul, but he's not stupid. He knows what it means. The ambiguity was intentional.

SimonHow in the world can you possibly say that? Fox omitted the part of Hoffa's speech saying "Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize". They chopped that off and spliced it together.

It's pure partisan hackery to whip up controversy where none exists, otherwise they wouldn't feel the need to do it in the first place. I could see it if they omitted sentences before or after for time purposes, or whatever.

Hoffa's message to all tea party business owners is don't ship nor except any shipments from Yellow/Roadway, ABS or any other Teamster dominated carrier because they don't want any tea party business. Use non-union Federal Express or Conway instead. No problem Jimmy! Consider it done. We can "punch back twice as hard" by boycotting teamster controlled trucking companies. In the case of Teamster controlled Yellow/Roadway who is struggling to stay out of bankruptcy it won't take much to knock them out. I will also be looking for the "union label" when I shop and if by chance I find one I'll place it back on the shelve. I'm sure no upstanding union worker would want a tea partier buying anything they made.

Simon said...I mean, we have to understand that labor is a commodity, and the purpose of unions is to create an artificial scarcity in the market for that commodity in order to benefit a monopoly provider===============Only in in the Patron System, slavery, and serfdom is the "local labor" considered a commodity akin to bananas, the Czar's beet crop, the local coal mines or timber resources.

In other systems, labor is a factor of production.

Unions are not responsible for America's recent, rapid decline as a nation that has good jobs, creates wealth, produces things. And has enough wealth generated by it's workforce to pay for things for the common good - and not bankrupt itself in debt when only 20% of the workers remain in good jobs to prop it all up.

Unions helped create the middle class and decent wages. What is undermining it is the push under Globalism and Free Trade to add a 4th economic system besides the slavery, serfdom, and banana republic patron system where workers are just global commodities.

Where the lowest cost labor bidder can have full access to any nation's internal markets.

It is not sustainable in America. We will soon have to emplace tariffs, protect our domestic markets.

(PS - there is little difference between unions and other workers groups that form to protect their sort of workers - the AMA, the Bar Association, the "credentialled classes, gas station chain owners that only employ fellow Pakistanis here. And all seek to create barriers to entry and regulate supply.)

Garage -- Why wouldn't companies in countries with even more goofy and stifling labor regulations seek labor in the United States? They would, naturally, in an elastic world where labor prices are constantly changing.

Your utter inability to understand any economics whatsoever has always troubled me. Tell me, though: do you keep yourself willfully ignorant or are you really, truly unable to understand the very basics of economics?

Not that any of this matters, as labor as a movement is dead, even in Wisconsin. Thanks to what democracy looks like. Sweet dreams.

Is it worth the risk of appearing foolish to play the game of holding your political opponents to their own rules?

Why not? Obama Party members do this all the time and never appear foolish to you, triangle.

Isn't it interesting how Obama Party members scream and cry whenever their own rules are enforced against them? Why, it's almost as if the little brats never expected to have to abide by their own idiocies. Just like how their "Tax Me More" billionaire Buffett is a tax-dodger and tax cheat.

"Now overseas companies are coming here for cheap labor without the worry of pesky labor unions that are provided for workers in their own countries. See IKEA, Verizon, BMW."

Jobs for us. USA! USA! Seriously, garage? You want to give us this as if it's a bad thing? You'd rather the workers in the US were unemployed than making BMW's? Giving someone a job is anti-labor?

Sort of like US companies moving to South Carolina to employ bunches of people who want to work and then getting held up by our government. See, if a company goes under because of expensive labor, that's the preferred outcome. Businesses are the enemy and if they go under then it's a win?

garage mahal said...WTH. No problem with Fox deliberately doctoring the video? It wasn't a matter of providing context. They dishonestly hacked it up.

Let's grant for the purpose of argument that you're right about Fox editing this unfairly. It's no more dishonest or partisan than what's done to those on the right or Republicans on literally everything they "quote" by CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, CurrentTV (whatever the hell that is), the NY Times, WaPo, LA Times, NewSpeak, Time, the AP (especially the AP), Reuters, et al, etc, ad nauseum.

I can recall vividly how every broadcast "news" organization and dying fishwrap pushed the outright lie that Limbaugh said he "wants America to fail" crap by ripping his remarks totally out of context, and that's only one example out of many thousands.

Fox is far and away outnumbered in reach and viewership ship by the rest of the leftlings in the Lewinskyite media. But you never see that, do you, because of those ideological blinders?

Your whole leftist religion now hangs on completely "taking out" Fox, talk radio, and controlling the internet. If you fail to do that, they will help this moderate/conservative majority nation understand what despicable propaganda the public has been fed for many decades.

garage, you're always against everything in your posts, so it's up to us to infer what you stand for. I would infer that you condone what Hoffa said and the militaristic tone with which he said it, and you're against foreign companies setting up non-union shops in the US and hiring US workers. When you follow these positions to logical ends can't you see how guys like Joe Stalin happen?

Please, enlighten me as to what you stand for, cuz in all your posts you only throw molitov cocktails at the right. The next time you actually champion a defensible liberal position will be the first time.

"'Sons of bitches' is despicable coming from the mouth of a union lesder in a public setting...."

The truth often sounds despicable to those not disposed to hear it."

Truth? More like the deranged verbal vomiting of a bona fide thug speaking his own 'truth' about how he personally feels about most Americans, i.e. non-union working citizens. As if union membership affords one a higher place on the human food chain. Au contraire!!!

I guarantee you Cookie, if you meet this guy and don't spout the union line, the knuckle sandwich you receive will definitely speak truth...be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

I loathe Jimmy Hoffa. Before Law School, I worked at a Golf Course in Ypsilanti, MI and we had a group of MI Democratic party leaders come to the course for a small outing. I carried Hoffa's golf bag and the asshole neither gave me a tip nor thanked me. So much for supporting the working man.

The Left and Big Labor are done. They've had their way everywhere from MA to Michigan to California, and every where they've gone, they've been defeated or their policies have led to massive debt and political corruption. Their last hope is to use violence to cling to power, so they're desperate to get some going. Doesn't matter, the facts don't lie. Leftism is a failed and hateful philosophy, already rejected by thinking Americans, it has no future.

garage mahal said..."Simon, [h]ow in the world can you possibly say that? Fox omitted the part of Hoffa's speech saying 'Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize'. They chopped that off and spliced it together."

Right. And that argument might work somewhere else. But for purposes of Althouse's analysis—which I join—that line isn't critical. Even if you view the quote in its full context, it's problematic.

Cedarford said..."Only in in the Patron System, slavery, and serfdom is the 'local labor' considered a commodity akin to bananas, the Czar's beet crop, the local coal mines or timber resources. ¶ In other systems, labor is a factor of production."

Flour is flour whether you're baking cookies or cakes, and labor is a commodity whether you like it or not. ("Labor," that is, not as a euphemism for "workers, but the good provided by laborers and purchased by employers.)

He says they're the only non-governmental power, and I can certainly believe that he and his boss work every day to make that true. We need to take those jack-offs out.* Through the ballot box of course. We need to take them out.*

It is highly inappropriate for anyone to use that sort of language at an event featuring the President of the United States, and doubly so when the speaker is Jimmy P. Hoffa whose father indeed was "taken out," though not by "those" sons of bitches, rather his own associates.

As for the leftist and liberal Democrat labels, if memory serves me right, I believe Jimmy R. Hoffa was a staunch supporter of Mr. Nixon in those days. With either Hoffa, it's about the money, not ideology.

Trumka, Hoffa, Obama, etc. are all depending on the ignorant hordes (picture the mooks who tried to grab AA's camera X 1,000) who have been voting for them to get out and literally fight for them. Little do they realize that the same personal characteristics that make the useless idiots vote Lib will prevent them from "rising up" as an sort of Army. Serving any sort of cause, even one as stupid and evil as Leftism, requires sacrifice. These shitbags don't know the meaning of the word. The Unions squawkers will keep squawking, but very little will come of it.

This is the way these people talk. The problem for Hoffa is that the success of the labor movement has resulted in workers who do not have to work much and have become lazy. They wont come out without the day off and free barbecue and they will be much less bellicose when they get in their trucks for the beery drive home.

When was Verizon a non-American company, garage? I work for the wireless side (you know, the non-union side that actually MAKES money, unlike our useless union brethren) and I am 99.9% sure we are American.

The Obama admin is clearly testing the waters here. How far can it go in threatening its most effective opposition, i.e., the Tea Party?

I believed, on the day Obama was elected, that he would one day have to be impeached, convicted and removed from office.

I did not base this belief on knowledge of any specific wrongdoing. I based it on two things: (1) an understanding of the way a corrupt Chicago politician does business, and (2) the repercussions of his "Vote for me or you're a racist" strategy.

My opinion hasn't changed. This clown may have to be forcibly removed from office, and that will be a calamity in itself.

I work for the wireless side (you know, the non-union side that actually MAKES money, unlike our useless union brethren) and I am 99.9% sure we are American.

This was the crux of the matter and a key fact in the larger debate. Verizon's wired sector (where the union workers are employed) has, simply due to the march of technology and the state of the art, become less important, ie profitable, to Verizon's margins.

Whether or not Verizon's striking union members have a real beef or not, their jobs are being subsidized in large part by the more profitable, and, frankly, futureproof wireless sector.

"Let's grant for the purpose of argument that you're right about Fox editing this unfairly."

It's not for the sake of argument. Fox took those son of bitching words out.

Literally amazing. But not unexpected.

I write a lengthy post contending that your leftist media dishonestly and constantly use partial quotes out of context and edit videos of conservatives (we'll leave their fabricating "quotes" and outright leftling hoaxes like the Bachmann "white people" fraud for another time.)

You, in order to support your statement that Fox dishonestly edited the Hoffa video, then dishonestly take the first line of my post out of context and ignore the fact that your side is the biggest offender.

I'm actually surprised you didn't just ellipsis out the first part of that line, like this:

"...you're right about Fox editing this unfairly."

and contend that I agree with you.

That would have been a perfect example of how the liars on the left work.

ST, if you think that Obama is so far gone that he would fail to leave office at the end of his term, what makes you think that he's not far gone enough to resist a Senate removal vote? (Don't play the military card; it has the same value in both games.)